Hanger was a holiday impulse buy. While I don’t usually go for police stories, I was excited to find a BL manga that didn’t have a school setting. What I found is a new comfort read!!! This review covers Volumes 1 to 4.

Hanger by Kisaragi Hirotaka-san is a science fiction, buddy cop-but-it’s-actually-gay tale set 100 years from now. After a pandemic decimated the global population, Japan’s medical research turned to nano-machines to boost everyone’s immune systems. Adding nano-machines to the bloodstream worked incredibly well, and there’s a new age of health for the pandemic survivors. People can heal from previously lethal injuries and illnesses, and modify their bodies how they want. Nano-machines can work miracles–but there’s nothing more heavy than a miracle. People can become addicted to nano-machines and the body modifications. If you’ve played Bioshock, basically splicers exist. People can become desperate for the next nano-machine-induced “high,” and quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the law. A special police force, Squad 4, acts as bounty hunters to bring sufferers in for trial, detox, and rehab. “Hangers” are splicers who have agreed to (a) manage their addiction and (b) help catch the domestic terrorists in return for a reduced sentence. Each Hanger is paired with a “Keeper,” who is their handler and mobile jail warden. This world-building is explained in the first pages, so it’s not a spoiler. Plus, it’s all backdrop for the love story of rookie Keeper Tsukumo Hajime and amnesiac Hanger Zeroichi.

The absolute worst thing about Hanger is that the story is unfinished. Volumes 1 to 3 were published from 2015 to 2019, and Volume 4 surprised everyone with its publication in March 2024. Kisaragi-san has long moved on to other projects, but us English-speakers still don’t know Zeroichi and Hajime’s happy ending. My other quibbles are very small against my delight with the book. The plot and science are secondary to the characters, and only the most careful of readings can attempt to fill the holes. Obviously, I wasn’t in the room with Gentosha Comics or TokyoPop, but it seems like Kisaragi-san was told to construct a much smaller story and then encouraged to make the story longer.

But I don’t care! What’s more important is a giant of man falling to his knees after a single kind touch from another human. Zeroichi has the skin hunger, and under a steady rain of kindness, his character flowers in the most rewarding way. Tsukumo is earnest, hard-working, and the least traumatized of the cast. He treats his new colleagues like people with emotions and needs. This respectful treatment blows the other Hangers and Keepers’ minds. No one has been nice to them, ever. They’re not even nice to themselves. Tsukumo doesn’t have all the answers, but always tries his best. At the start of the series, his ideas about addiction are regressive and dehumanizing, but as he learns and loves Zeroichi, his ideas transform too. Through Tsukumo, Kisaragi-san digs into discrimination against people with addiction and the total failure of the criminalization approach. That’s the good shit! Other Hanger-Keeper pairs are given lots of page time as well. On paper, characters like lusty bisexual Hashima and self-harming trans woman Byakuran veer into harmful stereotypes. I kept on reading though, and was rewarded with development and complication. 

What keeps me returning to this series, the constant source of serotonin, is how these super tough, buff people are given space to be so tender. Kisaragi-san’s characters and clothes are thick lines and angles, with sharp, even harsh, color contrasts. Then the panels show soft domesticity, like morning coffee, bed sharing, and kisses. I burn, I die; I perish.

I don’t normally get my hair this frazzled over science fiction. Despite its flaws, the story is plain good. The characters are especially compelling. Another part is the genre. A lot of the BL and GL I’ve read lately are set in high school or university, and the lovers don’t get together until the very end. In Hanger, they are all working adults. They kiss and get together pretty quickly, and the rewards stack up from there. If you can get your hands on a copy, give Hanger a spin.